Rangers Win Bidding for Yu Darvish

Widely considered to be the best pitcher in all of Japan,  Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish had his negotiating rights sold to the Texas Rangers from his Japanese League team, the Nippom Ham Fighters

Well, this is a bit surprising. Even though everyone in the baseball world expected the Jays to win the bidding for Darvish, the Rangers won instead, topping the Red Sox record bid for Dice-K ($51M posting fee) with a $51.7M bid. The Nippom Ham Fighters, Darvish's Japanese League team, accepted the bid late last night and immediately afterwards, the MLB announced that Texas had placed the winning bid. This was first reported by Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, and later confirmed by multiple other reporters. The Rangers now have until January 18 to hammer out a contract with Darvish.

Not like it matters, but I have quite a strong opinion when it comes to Japanese pitchers and the amount of money it costs to both win their negotiating rights and sign them to a a major league contract. I've been highly skeptical of Japanese pitchers for a couple years now, not only because of the Red Sox complete failure with Matsuzaka, but also the failures of former Yankees pitchers Chien Ming Wang and Kei Igawa. The style of play for pitchers in Japan is completely different than it is here in North America. Here, teams pitch guys until they hit their limit or until they start to lose the game. In Japan, they pitch guys until their arms fall off and, as we witnessed with Dice-K here in Boston, it doesn't matter what the count is, they always push it to 3-2 just for the thrill. It's extremely difficult for the pitchers to adapt to the style, and that causes problems and a lot of failures.

I also think that teams have to post far too much money just for the right to negotiate with the player and then have to dish out all star contracts to sign them. I personally think that all international players, not just Japanese players, should be treated as draftees/prospects. It shouldn't matter how highly touted they are, they're still coming to a completely different country with a completely different style of play. The bidding prices should be a hell of a lot lower than they currently are, and the actual contracts the players sign should be similar to those of players just drafted/being signed as prospects. They shouldn't even jump right into the major league either. If it were up to me, I would assign the player to my team's AA affiliate so he can start at an easier level and have an easier time transitioning to the style of play.

Anyways, good luck to Texas. Darvish is supposed to have some really good stuff, and I for one would actually like to see him become the ace he's supposed to become. I wonder if he throws the gyro ball.....